Contemporary Folk Protest Music and You

In an article for the journal Theory and Society, Ron Eyerman and Scott Barretta state that the folk music revivals of the late 1930’s and early 1960’s were both influenced by and a response to the turbulent political landscapes of the time (Eyerman, R., & Barretta, S., 1996). It would be foolish then to produce a guide to writing a folk song without acknowledging the deep connections that folk music and protest music share, and nearly impossible to write a guide for the former without also in some way writing a guide for the latter. As I am only occasionally a fool, I shall not attempt to do so, and thus I present to you this guide on writing a folk (or at least folk-y) protest music.

But let’s first take a step back. What is folk music, what is protest music, and why should you care to learn about either? When I say the term “folk music” in this guide, I will be referring to what is more precisely called “contemporary folk music,” a genre that developed in the mid-20th century and was spearheaded by such figures as Bob Dylan, The Weavers, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, both Woody and Arlo Guthrie, Phil Ochs, and the band Peter, Paul, and Mary. The genre used simple instrumentation (often consisting of just a singer and their guitar) and focused on populist and often political themes. Carol Pegg writes “During the 1960s, the term ‘folk’ came closer to its American usage of singer-songwriters, such as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Caroline Hester and Judy Collins, who accompanied themselves on acoustic guitars and performed some traditional material,” (Pegg, C., 2001). Protest music takes many forms, but in the context of this guide the term “protest music,” will refer specifically to the subgenre of politically charged and topical folk songs that developed during the same time.

On to the question of why you should care. Art has unique way of bringing people together, of expressing ideas not just rationally but emotionally, and of swaying hearts as well as minds. Folk is a beautiful genre, full of passion and relevance. What better way to convince others that your cause is just? What better way to create art that’s truly impactful and meaningful? If you care at all about the state of the world, if you care at all about art and beauty and virtuosity, if you care at all about creating something that has meaning beyond yourself, or about putting into words the emotions and discontents that crowd your mind, then this guide is for you.

Folk music has declined in popularity since its second revival in the 1960’s and 70’s, but the lack of mainstream folk protest music does not diminish the popularity of the genre outside of traditional production contexts, especially on the internet. With that in mind, I still believe this guide to be relevant to the modern musician. I also intend this guide to be a stepping stone for those interested in other genres of music as well. Folk music is a good introductory genre due to its accessibility, but has influenced many other genres, including pop and rock, and the lessons learned in this guide are readily transferrable to other musical contexts. Folk may be a dying genre, but its children are alive and well.

I will walk you briefly through the steps to creating an effective and competent folk protest song. Without further ado, let us begin.

Folk Protest Music and Its Relevance

It is almost a certainty that you have been exposed to folk protest music (or at the very least its culture), whether knowingly or unknowingly. If you have ever learned to sing “This Land is Your Land,” or “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” in elementary school, if you have ever spied a sticker that read: “This machine kills fascists,” or if you have ever marveled at how Bob Dylan became a superstar musician with what can be most charitably described as a “unique,” voice, then you have been touched by the influence of folk music.

The central tension of protest music is the balance between confronting political and topical themes and maintaining artistic vision. This tension is best demonstrated by an anecdote involving folk musicians Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan. The two (friends at the time) were sitting in a limousine together one day in 1965 when Ochs offered criticism of one of Dylan’s recent songs. Dylan responded, “You’re not a folk singer, you’re a journalist” (Jones, Dylan, 2011). Ochs, who at times called himself “a singing journalist,” (New York Times) would almost certainly have argued that these two labels were not mutually exclusive, had he not been promptly kicked out of the car.

The musician must take care to infuse a moderate amount of artistry in their songs. Too much artistry and the political point made by the song may be lost or misconstrued, too little artistry and the song is more akin to an opinion column than a work of art. A balance must be found, and the two goals of the piece (making a political statement and making a work of art) must be reconciled. You must be at once a folk musician and a journalist, never wavering too far to either side.

It should be stated that very often folk musicians, rather than write their own songs, cover and interpret the songs of musicians that came before them. This is almost universally true, and some of the most popular folk songs (“This Land is Your Land,” “Solidarity Forever,” “John Brown’s Body,” “I Ain’t Marching Anymore,” “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” and “The Last Thing on my Mind,”) have been covered several times over the years by various artists. Dave Laing writes that:

The [1940’s] revival was founded on song collecting and field recordings undertaken in the first decades of the 20th century by such figures as Carl Sandburg, John and Alan Lomax, and on the extensive musical repertory of such key source singers as Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie, along with early revivalists including Oscar Brand, Burl Ives and John Jacob Niles” (Laing, D., 2001).

While this guide acknowledges that fact, its focus will remain on original compositions. This is more characteristic of later and younger folk music revivalists, as Laing points out:

The younger generation attracted to the Folk Music Revival in both sides of the Atlantic often had a more flexible attitude to issues of repertory. The revival spawned a large number of singer-songwriters who accompanied themselves on the acoustic guitar but had little in common with those concerned primarily to bear witness to the tradition (Laing, D., 2001).

Musical Conventions

The ballad is a dominant form in the genre of folk protest music. Ballads traditionally follow common meter (alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, usually with an ABAB or ABCB rhyme scheme) and often feature a refrain (repeated line at the end of a verse) or in some cases an entire chorus (Gahan, Bill, 2007). Ballads typically focus on a single person of interest and revolve around a pivotal event in that person’s life, often their death. While songwriters and poets are allowed metrical freedom within the ballad, they will largely adhere to the standard practices of common meter. Due to these particulars, ballads are most effective when they are focused on particularly impactful people and events, and are not typically used for more general songs. Examples of folk protest ballads include Tom Paxton’s “Ballad of Spiro Agnew” and Phil Ochs’s “Too Many Martyrs.” The folk standards “John Brown’s Body,” and “Which Side Are You On,” are also both written in ballad form.

Of course, there are plenty of folk protest songs that do not take the form of a ballad. In fact, some of the most famous folk protest songs of all time, such as Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” are written outside of the ballad form. A great number (and I suspect the vast majority) of folk protest songs fall into the non-ballad category, which is the much more flexible than the at times constraining ballad category. As such, it allows the musician to tackle more general or broad topics. The sheer variety of forms and styles of songs possible makes a detailed description of song structure as it pertains to non-ballad folk songs somewhere between very difficult and impossible, and so I shall not attempt to do so. A brief overview of the most popular song structures will however be provided.

The most common song structure is verse-chorus structure (Bell, Ed, 2019). This structure uses as its building blocks the verses (which change in lyrics but remain largely consistent in melody) and choruses (which remain largely consistent in both lyrics and melody). Verses largely serve to set up and contextualize the chorus, in which the point of the song is expressed more directly (Bell, Ed, 2019). The most basic form of song follows a Verse 1-Chorus-Verse 2-Chorus-Chorus structure. While variations of that style are also prevalent–featuring bridges, introductions, and pre-choruses–that simple pattern underlies most popular music today.

Another popular form, refrain form, substitutes the chorus for one or two lines of repeated lyrics that (unlike the chorus) don’t differ significantly from the rest of the piece. This makes the refrain form ideal for more narratively driven songs (Bell, Ed, 2019).

A third popular form, AABA, utilizes two contrasting sections (A and B) that are arranged in an AABA pattern. The A sections in AABA form songs are usually more direct and self-contained, contrasted with the figurative and expressive B sections (Bell, Ed, 2019). For the most part, folk music uses verse-chorus of refrain form, often with four-line verses rhyming in an ABCB pattern.

Folk music traditionally uses simple instrumentation, often consisting of just the singer and their guitar, however younger folk musicians who followed tradition much more loosely (Laing, D., 2001) drifted away from this convention as the movement (and especially figures like Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs) also moved away from current political topics and towards more popular themes. As the movement evolved, the newer artists began to use more rock and pop-inspired instrumentations, departing from the traditional singer-and-guitar format and moving towards more complex arrangements (Pegg, C., 2001). Debate sprung up within the movement regarding the validity of these new styles, but, as I am no purist, I encourage the aspiring musician to do as they see fit.

 Integrating Politics and Humor

When it comes to integrating politics into your music, the first step is choosing a topic. Folk protest music covers a variety of social and political topics, and this gives the musician great flexibility in composing their songs. Singers can choose contemporary issues or timeless ones, broad issues or narrow ones. Choosing contemporary, newslike topics is a double-edged sword. These topics will make a musician’s song more relevant to their current audience, but have the negative side effect of dating the song, making it less relevant to future audiences. This can be remedied to an extent by updating the lyrics of your song to be continuously relevant.

As stated before, broad topics can be addressed, and in these cases the musician is allowed the freedom to not take an explicit stance and can shield themselves in a cloak of vagueness. Humor and sarcasm can also be effective tools, allowing the musician to get their message across without sounding too “preachy”.

Other examples include Paxton’s “Buy a Gun for Your Son” and “Be A Sport Afghanistan” as well as Ochs’ “Love Me, I’m A Liberal.” In all of these songs, the singer assumes a persona and sarcastically supports the very policies that they despise, criticizing them through praise.

More serious topics and tones can be taken on as well, but as this guide has stated earlier, it is important that the musician maintains constant awareness of the balance between art and information.

Audience participation is another prevalent aspect of folk protest music. Some songs (like Country Joe and the Fish’s ““I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die-Rag,”) encourage the audience to sing along with the musician, while others (like Paxton’s “I’m Changing My Name to Chrysler,”) feature a call-and-response relationship between the musician and audience. Both methods are effective in engaging the audience and bringing a performance to life.

Conclusion

This guide is by no means an exhaustive one, it merely seeks to provide the politically conscious with the tools they need to express themselves and tackle the subjects they are passionate about with some degree of virtuosity. While folk music has declined in popularity over the decades, the tradition of political music is still alive and well in other genres, especially rap and metal. Due to my personal lack of familiarity with the intricacies of these genres, as well as the accessibility of folk music (all one needs is a guitar, a voice, and a pen–and sometimes not even that much), I chose to center the guide on that particular genre, in the hopes that it will give a prospective musician the tools they need to take those first steps into song making.

References

Bell, E. “Anatomy of a Song: The Three Most Common Song Forms.” Musical U, Musical U, 12 Feb. 2019, musical-u.com/learn/anatomy-of-a-song-the-three-most common-song-forms/.

Eyerman, R., & Barretta, S. (1996). From the 30s to the 60s: The Folk Music

Revival in the United States. Theory and Society, 25(4), 501-543. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/657909

Gahan, B. “Ballad Measure in Print.” Ballad Measure in Print – UCSB 

English Broadside Ballad Archive, University of California at Santa Barbara, 2007, ebba.english.ucsb.edu/page/ballad-measure-in-print.

Jones, D. “Dylan Jones: ‘Bob Dylan Once Kicked Phil Ochs out of His Car Saying.”

The Independent, Independent Digital News and Media, 22 Oct. 2011, www.independent.co.uk/voices/columnists/dylan-jones/dylan-jones-bob-dylan-once-kicked-phil-ochs-out-of-his-car-saying-yoursquore-not-a-folk-singer-youre-2304327.htm

Laing, D. (2001). Folk Music Revival. Grove Music Online. Retrieved 2 Dec. 2019, from

https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.46854

Pegg, C. (2001). Folk music. Grove Music Online. Retrieved 21 Nov. 2019, from 

https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.09933

“Phil Who Described Himself as a ‘Singing Journalist’.” New York Times Crossword Answers,

New York Times, 12 Jan. 2018, newyorktimescrossword.net/phil-who-described-himself-as-a singing-journalist.